Niall’s Techdirt Comments

Re: A taste of ITAR

Which sounds a lot like Romania under Ceacescu and the Securitate - you may have spoken to someone who is related to someone who gave brief directions to a foreigner... so report to the local office pronto!

Re:

I still think the IRS didn't go nearly far enough. How many tax-free churches got heavily involved in politics in the Presidential election? How many of them breached the letter of their tax-free exemptions, if not the spirit?

And don't get me wrong. If there is corruption or over-partisanship on the other side, they should be smacked down too.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Re: Re: Re:

I would agree about the Nazis, other than that it was more about how Germany was treated post-WWI as anything. However, I think Russia and Communism was a lot separated from the War, as it happened during, not 15-20 years later, and would have happened anyway, even if not in that form.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

I also notice the lack of debate even allowed on pro-Imaginary Property websites - they seem to assume that any dilution of their bawking would be disasterous. At least Mike actively encourages debate on here, and people are willing to actually cite examples of anti-IP-abuse, either in the form of legal excesses or studies.

All the pro-stifling-creativity do is bawk "money! piracy! end of the world! the sky is falling!", while trying to justify legal shenanigans, outright illegal actions by major corporations and government, or moral outrages perpatrated on innocent printers and dead grandmothers.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

Ok, so post a picture of a Swastika on your web page or Facebook. Then we'll get a German prosecutor to charge you with breaking their anti-Nazi law. Feel free to fly to Germany to defend your 'innocence'.

Oh noes, did your wife/gf post a picture of her sitting in control of a car? She'd better get over to Saudi Arabia double-quick!

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

I'd rather be able to downvote you (would that be censorship too?) but we work with the tools we're given.

I also might have more respect for your position if it were not automatically against every single article here. Even regular commenters will disagree with Mike (or other posters) on occasion, and say so. I know there's a few areas where I differ with him. But you, you are like a negative image (and I mean that emotionally as well as literally) of the site.

In the extremely odd case where you have constructively added to the overall post, it has been refreshing and helpful. It is a shame that it is rarer than a blue moon. It also does you no good to mawkishly whine over people 'daring' to report you (being fed up with your unhelpful negativity), let alone getting a little trigger-happy with the Report button.

No-one expects you to agree fully with Mike or the other posters, but appearing to automatically disagree with everything they say seems really petty.

In short, you do yourself no favours, and if you wish to be taken seriously (which I assume you do if you post here) and don't want to end up losing any actual message you are trying to convey in all the garbage, negativity and whining, you need to stop constantly attacking, and try adding constructive criticsm.

Re:

Question is, did he make similar comments to male swimmers, especially with their potentially more extensive body hair? Did he dwell on the bikini line, as opposed to other areas that naturally have hair?

Re: Re: the higher end hotels

Even so, it's an absolutely ridiculous price to pay PER DEVICE. We are talking about anyone's individual mobile phone or laptop or tablet - which is a lot of devices in a conference centre. It would be one thing if they were charging $1000 for a high-end connection for a local high-bandwidth wi-fi that anyone attending the conference could use, or even charged a nominal amount.

Jamming a person's own service into the bargain is really adding insult to injury, quiet aside from the legalities of the issue.

Provincialism

There are two points of note. One, the article doesn't make clear that this is the Winter Olympics, which isn't as popular as the Summer Olympics.

Secondly, the Summer Olympics is still considered the World-class 'gold standard' of sport, precisely because it is against all the world gymnasts - it is not like you 'World Series' from one country! With proper planning (i.e. learning from Greece) it can actually work quite well.

The UK just hosted an extremely successful Summer Olympics. We planned infrastructure improvements so that we didn't have white elephants (we had enough of those from the Millenium), we had very good tourism for it, and more importantly, we pumped a lot of money into sports - which meant that not only did we have an incredible medal haul, but we have had incredible medal hauls in all major sports events since then, especially the Glasgow-hosted Commonwealth Games this year. Plus, it provided a much-needed public morale booster - with some help from Mitt Romney, whose dumb comments about it was going to be a bit of a disaster helped make the country pull together.

So the Summer Olympics can work for a host country, if done right and having infrastructure in place. True, we need to see how the London legacy works out, and how it works for Brazil in 2016.

That doesn't stop it being one of the most corrupt and broken processes on the planet (Qatar 2020 anyone?) and badly in need of reform, but as a world stage for athletes it has no comparison.

Re: Re:

We don't have quite the American/Randian 'love' for the free market over here, because after all, we are all raging socialists who expect free healthcare, social justice and don't mind paying taxes for the betterment of others.

Re: Re: Re: Let's look at the source code...

It's a comment on how 'backward' their IT skills are. If this was just another hillbilly militarised police force article, that would be one thing, but this article specifically is about the sheriff's technical ineptitude and that of his 'IT guys'. So yes, having a web page that looks nearly 20 years out of date doesn't exactly fill one with confidence about his IT staff, nor on the sheriff's technical 'savvy'.

Re: Re:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

Oh come on. I hate football. Pairing me with someone who loves football is a 'bad match'. I love computer games. Pairing me with someone who hates them is a 'bad match'.

You are jumping several bad logic hoops to align the idea of a 'bad' match with domestic violence. People are unfortunately far more likely to end up in domestic violence situations with people they otherwise match with, as those are the relationships that last and people are reluctant to get away from.